Call Your Girlfriend

I love Robyn. We dance the same. I wish we dressed the same. 

how you know you love someone

“That’s how you know you love someone, I guess, 

when you can’t experience anything 

without wishing the other person were there to see it, too.”

Kaui Hart Hemmings

homesick and heartsick with a heart full of love

I think I miss the Middle East more than I've ever missed a person, namely because I don't know when I'll be able to return. It's the same kind of sick-to-your-stomach feeling that overwhelms your body when your heart is broken over a lost love, or when you reminisce about your childhood home that you cried over when you had to move. It's like I'm me, but with fragments missing, and the fragments remain in a place more than 7000 miles away. They float under the rays of a desert sun at the Dead Sea, they fly in and out of crags in the Old City walls, they rest on stone walls in Akko watching the same desert sun fall into the Mediterranean.

Maybe even more than the places, I miss the people. I feel like my heart immediately engulfed everyone we met, like it was a big love monster that gobbled up everything we did and saw and everyone we met and spent time with. And the special ones were those that I traveled with--I know they'll be a part of me forever.

I find as I grow older, the list of things I cherish becomes steadily longer. As a child I cherished my Beach Boys cassette and my stuffed bunny rabbit named Raindrop and hugs from my grandparents. Time passed and then it was my driver's license and the freedom of the open road, then it was things that seemed so big, like "adulthood" and "responsibility." A few years have passed, and I think I've begun to realize that the things I've come to cherish most are the experiences I have with people that I love.

The Middle East taught me lots, but mainly about the things that matter most; that materials mean little, laughter means a lot, that silence is loud, and love knows no bounds.

"Now ye may suppose that this is foolishness in me; but behold I say unto you, that by small and simple things are great things brought to pass; and small means in many instances doth confound the wise."

Alma 37:6

the middle east

It's 3:00 am and I'm laying in my bed wide awake. In Jerusalem, it's 1:00 in the afternoon. I close my eyes and I feel as if I'm pulled back through time into the sounds, the sights, the smells of a place I love so much. I picture myself as a rag doll, scooped up by a child into a different time and space, yanked out of my bed in San Diego and tossed back into the Middle East.

It was the trip of a lifetime--bewitching; the kind that makes you homesick to think about. Awake in my bed as the rest of my sliver of the world sleeps, I squeeze my eyes shut, hoping to immerse myself back into my memories. It works, but I fear the memories will soon start to fade. I'd give anything to keep them alive forever.

May the next few days of recordings here be an effort to breathe life into days past. I can't expect to recapture it all, but I can attempt to illustrate my memories through words and pictures.

my biggest blessing

was born in 1986

in portland, oregon.

wishing the happiest of birthdays

to the best guy I know

I LOVE YOU,

taylor

a sketch

by Ellsworth Kelly

via Aubrey Road

you are good

“You are good. But it is not enough just to be good. You must be good for something. You must contribute good to the world. The world must be a better place for your presence. And the good that is in you must be spread to others.” 
― Gordon B. Hinckley